As they were getting closer to the police headquarters, Natalia noticed the glossy and luxurious line of black cars parked in front, as well as the few Peace Knights that were keeping watch over them. The first officer whistled as he looked at the cars, while the second officer carefully drove around them to drop Natalia off closer to the entrance.
Once inside the building, they quickly walked over to the officer at the front desk. The first officer asked the woman working there with a smile and a bit of a playful tone, "I've personally brought over 'The Lady Laroy'. Do I get a reward?"
The officer at the desk coldly looked back, answering with an indifferent, "No," before turning to look at Natalia. "The guest is over at the Chief's office. I think you already know the way."
"Very well. I'll be going now," answered Natalia with a nod, while leaving behind the officers. The first one overacting as if his heart was broken, while the second one was just shaking his head at him.
As Natalia was getting closer to the office, she could see that there were two men inside from the opened door, which was being guarded by another couple of Peace Knights, who only bothered to look back at her. One of the men inside the office was an old man, the chief, sitting at his desk looking seriously at the second one. The second man, sitting across, was a bald, very dark skinned man with a strong build, who was leisurely drinking a cup of coffee on his chair while having a carefree smile on his face.
Both men took notice of Natalia when she was at the door.
"You're finally here, Laroy," said the old chief, now having an annoyed expression on his face. "You always seem to bring me trouble wherever I see you or your name! And now some 'somebody' is pulling rank on me from the Corporation!"
"Now, now, there is no need to worry about that, I didn't come here to cause trouble, or rather… I should say…" the man paused to look at Natalia, "I came here to take it away."
"Cleavon Colton…" Natalia coldly said while looking at Cleavon taking a sip from his coffee.
Cleavon smiled and turned to the old Chief. "Say, we're going to need some privacy."
"You can go and use one of the interrogation rooms, and after that you can get out of here," answered the old Chief, while waving his hand as if shooing them away.
"Oh, no, no, no, that can't do, too many eyes and ears on the walls. Would you be so kind as to give us some time in your lovely office?" said Cleavon, putting the coffee cup down.
"What!? This is no dating café for you to sit down and just chat! Besides I can't have random people, some even dangerous," —the old chief quickly turned to look at Natalia— "to just stay in my office without me in it!"
Cleavon laughed while shaking his head. "You don't have to worry about anything, the Global Alliance Corporation doesn't care about whatever dirty little secret you're hiding in your drawers."
Hearing that remark the old Chief started getting red in the face.
"However, our patience can run out, and we might just start looking into this and that going on with certain people in certain groups…" Cleavon taunted with a smirk on his face.
The old Chief suddenly went pale and answered before Cleavon could continue. "Okay, fine! I get it! Just… don't take too long."
Saying that he angrily stood up from his desk, walked past Natalia without giving her a look, and slammed the door shut on the way out.
"So, did the Global Alliance Corporation finally see their need for me so much that they sent you to fetch me?" Natalia said while crossing her arms under her chest as she looked at Cleavon.
Cleavon didn't answer right away, as he quietly stood up from the chair and walked over to a window that overlooked this city.
"It doesn't take too much to figure out why we would be looking for one of our most—if not the most—valuable asset. You are, after all, one of the only two Imperator ranked Knights in the world, and I am here because we need you to fight again. Simple as that," he said as he looked down at the city.
Natalia didn't answer but she furrowed her eyebrows after listening to Cleavon's words. Cleavon calmly turned around and put one of his hands inside a pocket of his suit's pants and continued, "I know that the Global Alliance Corporation has taken some time to live up to their promises, but don't tell me that you endured all those experiments and took all of our investments just to end up in some dirty city beating petty criminals around—not even exterminating as you should be able to—simply because of that little incident."
Natalia scoffed and spoke with an almost threatening tone of voice. "That 'little incident' cost the lives of many innocent people, and nearly got me executed, all because I didn't do exactly what I was asked to do," she then put her arms to the side and her eyes seemed to gain a slight glow, "so you can take whatever proposal you have and leave me to do the right thing my way."
Cleavon shook his head at Natalia's enmity towards him. "I know that you joined the Peace Knights to rid the world of evil, to make sure that humanity turns in the best direction, and the Global Alliance Corporation also wants that, which is why I'm here. We need you to fight evil," he said before taking out a phone from his pocket, "red, horned, real evil."
Cleavon walked over to the table in the middle of the office and put down the phone on top of it.
Natalia glared at Cleavon. "Is this about the fact that there is no news from that portal in Manhattan?" she walked closer to the table, "I thought a bunch of Duke ranked Knights would be enough for any made up monster that you want to get rid of."
"Yes, in most cases a team of Dukes would be enough to handle the most dangerous of situations in the world, however…"
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"They all got wiped out by someone on the other side, am I right?"
Cleavon stayed quiet for a moment as he looked at the phone on the table.
Natalia raised an eyebrow, noticing that he didn't answer right away. "Or… something?"
"Not all of them got wiped out, no. One of them returned, and lucky for us, we got the recording of what wiped them out. Here, take a look."
Cleavon pressed the phone and a screen was projected midair, showing the controls for a video, where he pressed play on the screen. First, it showed the point of view of the team being talked to by the generals and other officers at the entrance of the portal. However, Cleavon decided to skip the talking part and forwarded it a little bit to where before they were about to step into the portal.
As soon as the person in the footage took a step into the portal, they saw a battlefield full of real armored knights, as if from the middle ages, fighting beings at the frontlines. The person in the video gasped as soon as he saw it, followed soon after by the unintelligible words of a woman on the side that was pointing at them and at the battlefield.
"What kind of language is that?" asked Natalia with her eyebrows raised a little.
"We have no idea. Our experts haven't been able to pinpoint it to anything, only that it could very well be something new."
After the woman on the footage screamed a few times in the direction of the expedition team and at the frontlines, the leader gave the order to fire on the beings at the back, which caused the video to zoom into the frontlines while the person took aim. Natalia pressed pause on that moment to take a careful look at what the image was showing, which made her frown.
She asked with a low voice, "Are those real? What are those?"
Cleavon stared at the image for a second. "We've decided to simply call them Demons, because, you know, they have horns, are huge, and are red," he responded before pausing to let her have a better look for a moment. "But that's not all there is."
Cleavon allowed the footage to continue. Someone on it called out to new enemies coming from their flank, which made the person in the video turn to look at them. A hoard of shadowy figures was coming very fast in their direction, which prompted the order to fire upon them. A few of the shadowy figures fell down, but most of them went by unscathed. The footage zoomed in on one of the fallen figures, which stunned the person on the video, calling out what he saw.
"Reapers?" Natalia asked to what was called out in the footage after seeing that they were indeed skeletons wearing black hoods and scythes.
"Yep, just like your good ol' grim reaper. Only that there's an army of them," commented Cleavon with a slight nod.
Soon after the figure was called out, a set of loud booms could be heard followed by explosions that started going off on and around the team, making their bodies fly everywhere with some of them leaving nothing behind. The order to withdraw was given, but the team had been mostly wiped out when the army of reapers got close.
The person in the footage ran back towards the portal, being the only lucky one that didn't get hit, while looking at the team leader that was being held back by the armored woman from before. Behind those two, a towering woman with wings on her back, clad in golden armor, was walking in the middle of the battlefield swinging a pair of glowing swords.
The last thing this person saw before jumping back into the portal was one of the team members on the ground—heavily injured, and holding on to the arm of another team member—being sliced by a reaper.
The footage was over by then, leaving Natalia stunned while looking at the stopped image of the video.
"Did any of those things walk back out of the portal to our side?" she asked with furrowed eyebrows.
"No, lucky for us, the Duke frantically handed over the footage from his helmet to the general as soon as he walked out, which had them promptly arm and throw into the portal a one-of-a-kind High Energy Hobbs bomb," answered Cleavon while picking back up the phone from the table.
"So, the reason you were looking for me is because you want me to go into the portal to make sure that none of those things get out, correct?"
"That's right. Imagine the amount of death and destruction that beings like that could inflict over our world, never mind a place like Manhattan."
Natalia lowered her head in thought.
"Come on Natalia, this goes beyond just political interests or corporate gains. This is all unknown to us," pressed Cleavon, seeing that she didn't agree right away. "The Global Alliance Corporation knows the dangers of this thing, which is why they're willing to make everything right by you and will be giving you everything you need, from the most advanced weapons to the best people we can gather, and we'll even give you whatever you want for this."
"Never mind my grievances, huh," murmured Natalia as she crossed her arms and looked to the side. She closed her eyes, humming as if in thought for a moment before responding. "Fine, I'll do this."
"Excellent! The Global Alliance—"
"But not for you, or the Corporation, I'm doing this to make sure innocent people don't suffer to whatever scheme you have planned," she interrupted after opening her eyes and raising her chin to look at Cleavon in an imposing manner.
Cleavon chuckled. "There is no scheme behind the scenes, The Global Alliance Corporation is just as concerned as you are in keeping humanity safe, which is why we've come to pick you up and make sure everything is the best as it can be."
Natalia scoffed at Cleavon's business-like response. "Well, regardless of how much of a 'super soldier' I am, I'm still just one woman and that over there is an army of demons and who knows what else. I can't do this alone."
"Oh don't you worry about that, we've already tracked down the other Imperator, so it's a matter of time before we get him to join as well," Cleavon said with a smile.
Natalia was stunned. "You know where Marcus is?"
"He's not an easy man to track down, but the Global Alliance Corporation has its ways."
Natalia raised an eyebrow at how easy it was to find the other Imperator, given that one's nature. However, she put away her questions and then gave a quick nod towards Cleavon, who was already walking towards the door.
As soon as they opened the door, the old Chief shouted from the other side of the hall, "Took you long enough!"
Cleavon just shook his head. After all, the old Chief was so far away that it seemed as if he was afraid of even walking loudly near the door and angering the Global Alliance Corporation executive or the Peace Knights keeping watch at the door.
"It wasn't that long," shrugged Cleavon as he was walking towards the exit.
"Are you in trouble, Natalia? 'Cus I would miss you kicking the asses of the criminals around here," said the first officer that had brought her to the station.
"No, but I'm not going to 'kick ass' around here anymore. I'm leaving with the Global Alliance Corporation," she answered while walking behind Cleavon with the Peace Knights in tow.
Only the steps of Natalia, Cleavon and the Knights walking could be heard on the station as everyone else fell to silence. They just couldn't believe that someone could get Natalia to follow them anywhere, since for the time that she has been here, she'd beaten more criminals than some of the old people in the station, while not once getting in trouble with the chief, or anyone else for that matter.
The first officer came back to his senses before everyone else and did a military salute. "Well you better kick ass wherever you're going next, Lady Laroy!"
Nobody else followed his actions but they all understood why he did it.
Natalia returned a soft smile and calmly said as she was walking out with Cleavon, "You too."